Monday, November 18, 2024

1954-12-16 Pretty Girl

Lynne Allen stars as a pretty college girl knows that fellow students and male faculty are attracted to her, and she has an attraction to older men. She seems programmed to automatically use that attraction to her advantage, but turns suitors away once she has what she wants. The suitors turn into stalkers, and a stalker who is convinced he wants to marry her becomes violent when she turns him away. The broadcast begins when she is in a police station, speechless. Police are determined to understand how that man died in her confrontation with him. The end is a bit creepy as she starts to flirt with a police officer and you realize the undercurrent of trouble that she brings with her in even the smallest of acquaintanceships. You wonder if this could all happen again… and again...

The story is by E. Jack Neuman. Lynne Allen (occasionally billed as “Marilyn” or “Lynn”) was active in radio, including many Macdonnell shows, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was in many 1950s TV productions. She passed away at age 49, of cancer, in 1972.

The announced broadcast was “Baby Sitter,” which has a different plotline. That script might never have been broadcast. Newspaper listings were sparse in the non-sponsored era of Suspense. The newspaper plotlines that could be found had this (composite) description:

A young girl finds there are hazards in every occupation, even baby-sitting, especially when a jilted man is concerned in “Baby Sitter,” on Suspense.

The plot of Pretty Girl includes a young girl, and a jilted man, but she’s not a baby sitter, and she’s in college when babysitting was common among high school students. Sure, she’s in an academic environment where long-term older cynical faculty sometimes refer to introductory freshman classes in a derogatory manner as “baby sitting,” but this is not a snide reference in a script title. No newspaper listing of Pretty Girl or a correct published plotline has surfaced. The script of “Baby Sitter” might never have been produced. Or, it could have gone in for a massive re-write and became Pretty Girl. We may never know. If there was an original “Baby Sitter” script, we do not know the author.

Classic radio researcher and international entertainer notes that...

After fifteen shows, producer-director Norman Macdonnell leaves Suspense. He was busy prepping Gunsmoke for television, as well as producing two weekly radio series, Gunsmoke and Romance. Antony Ellis replaces him, and will produce and direct the next 93 shows. Ellis’s associate director is Ken McManus.

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https://archive.org/details/TSP541216

THE CAST

Lynne Allen (Emmy Carter), Paul Dubov (Lieutenant Lew Gayle), William Justine (Sergeant Ham Norman), Dolores Pinard [Brown] (Sally), Vic Perrin (Ray Hamilton), Tim Graham (Dr. Walter Church), Ann Morrison (Mrs. Hilda Church), Sam Edwards (Jug), Larry Thor (Narrator)

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